Battle of Hastings, The by Harriet Harvey Harriet; Wood Harvey Wood Page B

elsewhere in Europe on a scale unequalled in Europe until the days of the Nazi
Property Transfer Office, no doubt to protect their original owners from the shameful luxury of which William of Poitiers complained. Finally, there was almost the worst act of vandalism of all,
the dissolution of the monasteries at the Reformation, during which innumerable pieces of religious art were broken up or melted down. Items made of precious metals were always at risk of being
melted down, either for refashioning in more modern styles or, more usually, for their cash value. William of Malmesbury records one such instance, this one not the responsibility of the Conqueror
but of his heir, William Rufus:
    The bishops and abbots flocked to the court complaining about this outrage, pointing out that they were not able to meet such heavy taxation. . . To which, the officials of
     the court, replying as usual with angry expressions, said: ‘Do you not have reliquaries made of gold and silver, full of the bones of dead men?’ No other reply did they deign to
     give their petitioners. So, the latter, seeing the drift of the reply, stripped the reliquaries of the saints, despoiled the Crucifixes, melted down the chalices, not for the benefit of the
     poor but for the King’s treasury. Almost everything which the holy frugality of their ancestors had preserved was consumed by the avarice of these extortioners. xxxi
    Fortunately, there are records that give some idea of what England was once like. Dorothy Whitelock has given a good description of what the churches once
had:
    . . .while the St Cuthbert stole and the Bayeux tapestry let us understand why English needlework was so prized on the Continent, it is the constant reference to precious
     objects – a cloak of remarkable purple, interwoven throughout with gold in the manner of a corselet, which was turned into a chasuble; robes of silk interwoven with precious work of gold
     and gems; a beautiful chasuble that shone like gold when worn in the house of the Lord; a chalice of gold flashing with gems ‘as the heavens glow with blazing stars’; great
     candelabra, all of gold; images of the saints, covered with gold and silver and precious stones; and countless other treasures – vestments, altar-cloths, tapestries, dorsals, shrines,
     croziers, bells, etc. – which explains the great impression made on the Norman conquerors by the richness of the equipment of the English churches. We should never have guessed this
     without the aid of literary records. xxxii
    Professor C. R. Dodwell has taken the trouble to go through all the written records and bring together the evidence they contain about Anglo-Saxon artefacts. His valuable book, Anglo-Saxon Art xxxiii , has revealed an impressive amount of information about what used to exist, even if practically nothing of it has
survived. It is clear from this that the average Anglo-Saxon, and even more the higher ranking ones, believed in conspicuous display. Anything that could be fashioned in gold was made of it.
Objects that could not be made entirely of gold would at least be coveredwith it, like the ship presented by Earl Godwin to King Harthacnut, which not only had a
gold-encrusted prow but was also equipped with eighty warriors, each of whom wore two gold arm-rings and had a partly gilded helmet, a sword with a gilded hilt, a battle-axe edged with gold and
silver and a shield with gilded boss and studs. The description of Cnut’s ships supports the evidence for this kind of display:
    So great, also, was the ornamentation of the ships, that the eyes of the beholders were dazzled, and to those looking from afar they seemed of flame rather than of wood. For
     if at any time the sun cast the splendour of its rays among them, the flashing of arms shone in one place, in another the flame of suspended shields. Gold shone on the prows, silver also
     flashed on the variously shaped ships. xxxiv
    Professor Dodwell discovered that much of what